Heroin addiction leads E. Coventry man to crimes

WEST CHESTER >> Chester County defense attorney Stephen Baer told a Common Pleas Court judge on Monday that he first met Josiah “Josh” Ramanjulu when the young man was a teenager and student at Owen J. Roberts High School, charged with stealing $15 from his father.

He guided Ramanjulu through the ins and outs of the Juvenile Court system and came to enjoy the youth’s company, Baer told Judge Anthony Sarcione. “I have had many clients through the years, and I can say genuinely that I like this young man.”

So it with some sense of sorrow that Baer presented Ramanjulu to Sarcione for sentencing on a series of criminal charges that stem from his client’s overwhelming heroin addiction. Ramanjulu committed thefts and a robbery for money to buy the drugs he was secretly using.

Ramanjulu, 24, of East Coventry said that by the time of his arrest in March, he was using 10 bags of heroin a day. As his 18-month long addiction grew, so did the need for money that his jobs as a security guard and a convenience store clerk could not provide.

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“I have come to realize the lengths I had to go through to obtain heroin, and how much it affected the victims (of his thefts),” Ramanjulu told the judge during his sentencing hearing.

“You are fortunate to still be with us,” Sarcione told the defendant, calling the rise of heroin use in the area “an epidemic.”

With his father and mother sitting a few feet away in Sarcione’s courtroom, Ramanjulu was sentenced to five months and seven days-to-23 months incarceration, plus an additional three years’ probation. Although he is eligible for immediate parole – in jail since March 19 – the agreement that Baer made with Assistant District Attorney Bonnie Cox-Shaw is that Ramanjulu would not be released until he could be admitted to an inpatient drug treatment facility.

Baer said that his client had been able to maintain a stable living environment while his addiction was soaring because his parents were not familiar with the signs of heroin addiction. He continued to use the drug under their noses.

“I am blessed to have parents that care for me,” Ramanjulu told Sarcione. “It does hurt me to see the shape that they are in now.”

Samuel Ramajulu, in addressing Sarcione, said his family had come to the U.S. from India when his only son was 1 year old, and that they had tried to raise the family as Christians. He said, however, that he recognized that his son was “not special to the law,” and that he should be treated as everyone else.

Ramanjule had pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of theft by unlawful taking, robbery and access device fraud.

In the first case, Ramanjulu was charged with taking booklets of scratch-off state Lottery tickets worth $2 on two occasions in January and February. The thefts came when he was working as a clerk at a Sunoco gas station and convenience store on Lancaster Avenue in East Whiteland. He was captured on a video surveillance camera coming into the store at 5:40 a.m. on Feb. 10 and took two of the books. He later texted the store manager to say he would not be coming to work that day.

A few weeks after that, Ramanjulu was at the Giant Food Store in Phoenixville when he swiped a woman shopper’s purse from a shopping cart. Police later identified him as using credit cards from the purse at a Montgomery County hotel and at various stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy in the area.

In the most serious case, Ramanjulu was charged on March 19 with robbery, a felony, when he again tried to take a woman’s purse from a shopping cart at a Giant store in East Whiteland. The purse was strapped to the woman’s arm, and she was able to delay Ramanjulu and chase him through the store after he tried to take the purse.

He was taken into custody by township police, and admitted to trying to steal the purse, as well as to the other theft in Phoenixville.

Baer said that from the beginning, Ramanjulu had admitted his wrongdoing.

“He said ‘I did these things and I need to be punished for them,’” Baer said. “I think it is time for him to move on to the next stage, your honor.”